THE EFFECT OF TEACHING READING USING TOP-DOWN AND
BOTTOM-UP MODEL ON READING SKILL OF THE SECOND
YEAR STUDENTS OF SMP N 2 MOJOGEDANG
IN 2007 / 2008 ACADEMIC YEAR
RESEARCH PAPER
Submitted as a Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for Getting Bachelor Degree of Education
in English Department
by
AMIN CAHYANI ICHTIARTI A 320 040 098
SCHOOL OF TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION
MUHAMMADIYAH UNIVERSITY OF SURAKARTA
CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
A. Background of the Study
Reading is one of the crucial activities in everyone's life. By reading
people know things that happen around the world. Even people can also
explore anything and anyplace they want without going anywhere. There is so
much information communicated in written form. So everyone will get a lot of
knowledge and experience and develop good attitudes by reading books,
literatures, news, magazines, and so on. Finally, we will be able to take mature
and rational acts.
There are many books written in English as an international language.
On the other side, English for Indonesian people is a foreign language not the
second one. For a lot of people, it may create a new problem in getting
information and knowledge from all over the world.
According to Aebersold and Field (1997: 15) in a general sense,
reading is what happens when people look at a text and assign meaning to the
written symbols in that text. The text and the reader are the two physical
entities necessary for the reading process to begin. It is, however, the
interaction between the text and the reader that constitutes actual reading. The
meaning the reader gets from the text may not be exactly the same as the
one reader gets from a text may be different from that of other readers reading
the same text.
To be able to interpret meanings of texts and to understand them, the
reader should have reading skill. For most experts, reading skill is the most
important skill beside listening, speaking and writing. In reading, readers not
only have to decode the meaning of words one by one, but also have to
understand the meaning of the words in context (phrases, sentences, even
discourses). In other words, readers not only have to call out the names of
words but also have to have ability to understand those expressed by writer.
In relation to learning process, reading activities are the most
important source in obtaining knowledge. In teaching-learning process, the
roles of teacher in giving material will decrease in accordance with the
increasing educational level of students. So the students have to improve
themselves by reading a lot. In short, reading is a highly complex skill that is a
prerequisite to success in our society, especially in learning process.
In reading, many kinds of reading models have been applied. A good
reader should have an ability to select and choose the most appropriate model
of reading. Readers identify letters and words only to confirm their
assumptions about the meaning of the text. It is well known as Top-down
Model. In this model the reader is active, makes predictions, processes
On the other hand, the reader constructs the process that results in
meaning. This kind of model is well known as Bottom-up Model. In the
beginning stages it gives emphasis to the influences of the reader's world
knowledge, contextual information, and other higher-order processing
strategies.
Based on the explanation above, the writer is interested to know the
effect of teaching reading using Top-down and Bottom-up model on student
reading skill so that the writer will conduct the research entitled “THE
EFFECT OF TEACHING READING USING TOP-DOWN AND
BOTTOM-UP MODEL ON READING SKILL OF THE SECOND YEAR STUDENT’S
OF SMP N 2 MOJOGEDANG IN 2007 / 2008 ACADEMIC YEAR”.
B. Problem Statement
Based on the research background, the problems of this research are:
1. Is there a significant difference of the result between students who are
taught using Top-down Model and students who are taught using
Bottom-up Model?
2. Which group has better achievement, the group taught by using Top-down
Model or the group taught by using Bottom-up Model?
C. Objective of the Study
Based on the problem statement above the objectives of the study are:
between students who are taught using Top-down Model and those who
are tough using Bottom-up Model reading.
2. To know whether teaching reading using Top-down gives better result
than teaching using Bottom-up.
D. Limitation of the Study
In this research, it is impossible for the writer to handle all of the
problems. Therefore, the writer limits the problem on the effect of teaching
reading using top-down and bottom-up model on reading skill of the second
year student’s of SMP N 2 Mojogedang in 2007 / 2008 academic year. Here,
the writer uses descriptive and recount text to teach the students. The material
given are those which are familiar to the students.
E. Benefit of the Study
Hopefully the study will be beneficial in the area of teaching reading.
This study is hoped to be used as consideration, especially for teacher of
English, which one is more effective using Top-down Model or Bottom-up
Model in teaching reading and the result of this study can be useful for find
out fact that one of model is more appropriate for improving student's reading
It is also hoped that this information will be used for the writer herself
to improve and to enhance the teaching skills. This study also gives benefits
for other writers who are interested in the same topic.
F. Research Paper Organization
Chapter I is Introduction, which covers background of the study,
limitation of the study, problem statement, objective of the study and benefit
of the study.
Chapter II deals with review of related literature. This chapter
presents previous study, notion of reading, reading skill, teaching reading,
general concept of teaching reading skill, reading models, theoretical frame
work, and hypothesis.
Chapter III is research method. It includes type of research, object of
the study, data and data source, method of collecting data, technique for
analyzing data, and research procedure.
Chapter IV is result of the study
